08 Dec 2016

President of the Customary Court of Appeal in Francistown, Kgosi Christopher Masunga, says drug and alcohol abuse cases mostly affect the youth.

Kgosi Masunga said this at the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Cultural Development and the Ministry of Health and Wellness drug and alcohol abuse consultative forum in Francistown.

Kgosi Masunga said customary courts always received new cases of deviant behavior, which was drug motivated.

He said they were faced with a challenge of parents who did not want to cooperate with them in curbing socially unacceptable behavior but would rather encourage it by enticing the youth with money to sell these drugs.

“It is high time that as law enforcement bodies, we join hands and review sentences passed to law offenders as it seems like they  are no longer deterred by charges laid and continue engaging in lawless behavior,” he said.

For his part, Botswana Police Service’s Detective Motshidisi Sello stated that drugs such as crack cocaine, weed cake and mandrax awere readily available in and sold much cheaper.

He indicated that recently in Gumare, they arrested an elderly couple who were found to be cultivating 200 plants of marijuana in their field.

A counsellor at Botswana Substance Abuse Support Network (BOSASNET), Mr Isaac Tokonyane stated that for a long time, the focus had been on alcohol abuse preventative measures with issues relating to drug abuse mostly sidelined.

He stated that initiatives such as ‘fokotsa dino’ had been found to be non-inclusive of issues relating to drug abuse, which heightened over the years since the introduction of the alcohol levy.

Furthermore, he said there is a need to come up with a programme, which could be inclusive of these key issues and mostly accommodate for dialogue being the government, the youth and other key stakeholders affected by drug and substance abuse. ENDS